


Counting Clouds

by sunshinexbomb



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fix-It, Gen, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Lake House AU, Tony Stark Has A Heart, time travel nonsense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-24 04:03:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20352085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinexbomb/pseuds/sunshinexbomb
Summary: After the events fromFar From Home, Peter retreats to Tony's lake house for safety. While there, he writes letters to Tony to unwind - letters that somehow make their way to Tony in 2018. Tony and Peter, both dealing with the grief of losing each other in two different time periods, find solace through a form of communication that shouldn't be possible. An AU based loosely onThe Lake House.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea for this story came to me very, very late at night while waiting for take-off at O'Hare airport. Immediately, I wrote down all my thoughts for it in the notes app on my phone, outlined ten chapters for it when I got home, and finished the first chapter in just a couple of days.
> 
> I have only attempted to do a WIP once, many many years ago, and I hope this attempt will go better! Tentatively the plan is to post a chapter every week. Each chapter will be around ~2k words (some more, some less, depending). I apologize ahead of time if things get off schedule - that's why I said "tentatively"! 
> 
> This story will contain spoilers for both _Endgame_ and _Far From Home_. For the most part, it will be canon compliant (except when it's not). Additional tags will be added as we go. I do not own these characters, but I like playing around with them for my own entertainment.
> 
> The title for this fic is from "Writing Letters" by Ron Pope. Thank you to Coco for beta'ing the first chapter and your kind words!

_ **2023** _

The lights flicker for a second before turning on all the way with a low buzz. Out here, away from the constant chaos of the city, Peter can practically feel the gentle hum of electricity in his bones. It’s so, so quiet, almost disconcertingly so, and Peter already misses Queens - maybe even more so because there’s no telling when he’ll be going back.

It’s been nine months since Peter’s been to the lake house. It was hard enough then, and somehow even harder now. He feels stuck, feet rooted to the porch and unable to carry himself over the threshold and inside.

“Come on, Peter,” he mumbles to himself. It’s stupid. He shouldn’t need encouragement to take one small step, to move his feet from one place to the next. Peter’s lifted entire buildings off of himself, stopped buses with his bare hands, battled aliens, and even died and come back to life. This shouldn’t be _so damn hard_.

Outside, Peter can hear the buzzing of cicadas, the croaking of frogs, the soft rustle of wind through the leaves. Inside, Peter only hears the constant, steady static flowing through the lights, the appliances. For a safe house, none of it makes him feel safe.

Peter doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel safe again, but for now, this is all he has.

He steps inside.

\--

The lake house is Pepper’s idea.

For two weeks, Peter has half the world out looking for him, and Pepper Potts is the only one to find him. He’s not surprised, because Pepper is freaking amazing, but he still wishes that he could have kept her out of it.

“The house is totally off-grid,” she tells him. “Morgan and I are in the city now, so no one will go looking for you there.”

“I can’t,” Peter says, voice small. “What if someone does find me? What if they know you’re helping me?”

“Then we’ll deal with that too,” Pepper says, taking his hand. “Peter, you’re important to this family - you always have been. It’s what he would’ve wanted.”

Pepper’s hands are smaller than his, but they feel strong and grounding, like May’s always do. Peter swallows thickly around the lump in his throat. “I don’t want to put anyone else in danger.”

“You won’t be, honey,” Pepper says. “We can protect you. Me, Happy, Rhodey - we’re all on your side. We’ll figure this out.”

Logically, Peter’s known that he’s had people behind him the whole time. But here, in the middle of nowhere, at a motel that takes cash and doesn’t ask questions, it’s hard for Peter to feel like he isn’t all alone. Peter never really wanted to leave home, but he had to. There was no other option when everyone knew his name, his face, and thought they knew who he was.

All it took was a few seconds to brand Spiderman from a hero into a terrorist, and now Peter has no idea where his life will go. Maybe, it will be good to follow Pepper’s advice. Be somewhere he knows, somewhere he can be alone, but not be on the run.

“Okay,” Peter says finally, squeezing Pepper’s hand once before letting it drop. “But if there’s any trouble at all, I need to leave. I can’t - I won’t let anyone else get hurt because of me.”

Pepper nods, and Peter knows that she understands. They’re taking a risk, a big one, and Peter just hopes that it will be worth it.

\--

It’s been months since anyone has been in the lake house, and it shows. Peter’s chest tightens a little as he walks around, turning on lights and uncovering furniture. There’s a haunting sort of loneliness caused by the layers of dust and bare shelves and walls.

The house is still furnished but there are no more pictures on the walls, no mementos on the fireplace mantle, no drawings by Morgan on the fridge. There’s none of the things that used to make the house feel like a home. Peter wonders if the place could ever feel like a home to Pepper or Morgan again.

Peter takes his time making his way down the halls. He’d only been to the house once before, and he’d barely stayed inside that afternoon, choosing instead to sit on the pier, away from the noise and the sickly sweet scent of fresh flowers, so strong that it was nearly suffocating.

It was hard to breathe that day anyway, just as it is now. Peter hates the six ton elephant that seems to have settled on his sternum, making every breath he takes a labor. He doesn’t want to be here: not then, not now. He doesn’t want to be in this house that he never got to visit when it was filled with life and only got to see once when it was a place of mourning.

“Fuck,” Peter mumbles to himself. He feels light-headed all of a sudden, still breathing harshly. “What am I doing here?”

He drops his bag where he’s standing, leaning his back against the wall for support, sliding down until he’s sitting on the cold hardwood floor. Peter presses the heels of his palms against his eyes. He doesn’t know if he can do this.

It’s been nine months since Peter came back from the blip. Nine months since he fought in the final battle. Nine months that he’s had to try and find his place in a world that moved on without him for five years.

That nine months is all he got, too, because it’s been two weeks since a breaking news story from The Daily Bugle and an edited video turned the whole world against him.

Peter wants to be home, wants to sit on the couch with May, to work on the Death Star lego set that Ned bought, or sit shoulder-to-shoulder with MJ in his room as they listened to music together. Peter wants his life back, that one he’d just gotten back before Quentin fucking Beck took it from him.

Peter wants to be anywhere but the house where Tony Stark used to live with his family, and yet, there’s nowhere else that Peter has left to go.

\--

Peter has no idea how long he spends, sitting there in the hall, trying to wrap his head around the fact that he was _here_ inside Tony’s house. He knows that it will still take some time getting used to, even without the personal effects that Pepper obviously took back to the city when her and Morgan moved out.

Eventually, Peter picks himself up from the floor, making his way farther into the house. There are three bedrooms, and Peter picks the one closest to the rest of the house, relieved that when he opens it, it seems to just be a spare bedroom. The bed is modestly sized and the colors of the room pleasant but dull. Overall, it’s unassuming, perfect for someone passing through for a night or two and with none of the personality that comes with a room that’s being lived in on a day-to-day basis.

Peter’s exhausted. He’s been moving from town-to-town, making his way farther down south the past couple weeks to stay unnoticed from anyone who might recognize him from his pictures spread scross every news site. It’s been days since Peter got a proper night’s sleep, and he should be able to to pass out as soon as he lies down.

Yet, Peter’s restless, tossing and turning on the too-soft bed. It’s the quiet, he thinks. He’s never tried to sleep somewhere with such suffocating silence.

Peter sits up with a sigh, pushing hair out of his face before getting up and finding his backpack. He digs around in it for a little bit, trying to find his headphones so he can at least listen to something that will fill the silence.

His headphones are tangled together as he tries to pull them out, the cords wrapped around a stray pencil and stuck inside the pages of his composition book. He pulls those out too, taking them both back to the bed with him.

It takes him a minute to get the headphones untangled, and when he finally does, he plugs them into his phone, turning on a playlist MJ had made for him for nights like this when he felt like crawling out of his skin.

Absent-mindedly, Peter runs his fingers along the edges of the notebook, flipping through random pages. There are notes from school on some pages, some scribbles about his web fluid on others, as well as ideas he had for improving the spider suit. He stops on a blank page near the end, twirling the pencil around his fingers as the sounds of Lauv filter through his headphones.

He remembers something his counselor had said during his first weeks back in school after the blip, how it was helpful to write out his thoughts when they were racing or when he was confused or worried. At the time, Peter had pushed the idea aside. He never had a way with words. Peter has always worked better with numbers and formulas, but he supposes, this one time, he may have a few things he wants to say.

_ **2018** _

Tony’s barely in through the backdoor before Pepper comes waddling into the kitchen, hands supporting the arch of her back.

“If you forgot my ice cream-”

“Hello to you too, my lovely wife,” Tony says, kissing her lightly. “Yes, I did have a good time in town. The weather this morning is quite nice. I saw a beautiful Australian shepherd-”

“Tony, ice cream,” Pepper says, ignoring him completely as she digs through brown bags of groceries, smiling only when she emerges with her prize. “Oh, thank God.”

Tony’s lucky that Pepper is too busy with her ice cream to see him roll his eyes, or else he’s sure he’d get an entire earful about it.

“What did you do while I was gone?” Tony asks, putting the groceries into the fridge as Pepper sits down at the kitchen table, already going to town on her Chunky Monkey.

“Oh, you know, the regular. Sat around, watched TV, tried not to feel huge and disgusting. Waited for my ice cream delivery before my cravings switched to something else terrible.”

“Sounds nice. I’m kind of jealous,” Tony says. He takes a seat in the chair where Pepper has her feet up, settling them in her lap and rubbing the arches of her feet in the spot he knows she’s been feeling the most pressure recently.

“Great, next time you can carry the baby,” she says, and Tony laughs.

“I don’t know, I think I’ll pass.”

A comfortable quiet settles between them, and Tony relaxes, scrolling through his phone as Pepper makes her way through her snack.

They’ve had the lake house for about a year now, and Tony still can’t believe how much he loves it. He thinks that maybe, he was never fully made for the city. Tony loves his space, his freedom. He’s never shied away from attention, but he likes his privacy too. There was a reason he had built the Avengers compound upstate all those years ago, and moving out here to the lake has the same calming effect on him as the compound used to.

It’s the quiet, he thinks. How there’s nothing but him and Pepper with Rhodey occasionally dropping in to visit when he’s not off on some mission. Out here, it’s easy for Tony to forget - everything. It feels like a fresh start away from the chaos his life had become since Afghanistan.

“Oh, the mail did come while you were out,” Pepper says. Tony thinks she’s starting to scrape the bottom of her ice cream, and he’s actually impressed with how fast she’s devoured it. “I put everything on the coffee table for you to look through, though I’m sure most of it is junk.”

“I’ll get to it soon,” Tony says, standing up. He stretches, joints cracking as he does. Man, he’s getting old. “I’m going down to the basement for a bit.”

“Don’t be too long,” Pepper says.

“Holler if you need anything,” Tony says, making his way down.

“You know I will,” Pepper calls after him, and Tony can’t help but smile.

\--

Tony doesn’t spend much time down in his lab anymore. There’s no reason to even have one, really, other than the fact that sometimes Tony needs an escape.

It’s funny, the entire house is supposed to be an escape, but even that’s not enough at times.

Tony’s not working on anything specific. It just feels good to tinker, honestly. Work with his hands, let his mind focus on the task at hand so it doesn’t have too much time to wander to places that he’s still not comfortable going.

He has a few projects, a new suit (just in case, you can never be sure, even in retirement), some security features he wants to add to the house, improvements to Rhodey’s War Machine suit that might help him with the tasks he’s working on these days. His work desk is a mess of blue prints and scribbled ideas, some of them old, since - before. Ideas for webshooters and ways to monitor a suit that’s been lost along with its owner.

Today is not one of those days where Tony needs to escape. It’s not a day where the quiet is too much or a day where he wakes up in the morning, barely able to breathe. It is a day, though, where he feels a bit restless, a jitteriness that wasn’t cured by a trip into town and a grocery run to deal with Pepper’s latest craving.

So, for a few hours, Tony lets himself work, and thinks about nothing else.

\--

It’s not until after dinner that Tony takes a seat in the living room, rifling through the day’s mail. Pepper’s right, it is mostly junk. He tosses out credit card offers and circulars he’ll never look at, and he’s about to call it a night when his eye catches on something.

It’s just a piece of paper, not even in an envelope or anything. Just ripped out of a journal, folded in half and crumpled. Tony’s name is on the front, _Mr. Stark_ in familiar handwriting that he can’t place.

Curiosity gets the best of him, and he unfolds the paper.

Tony reads, and as he does, his heart plummets to the bottom of his stomach.

_ Dear Mr. Stark, _

_ It’s kind of silly writing to you like this, but I feel like I need to just get it out. That’s what we were told. Just talk or write or whatever so our thoughts aren’t stuck in our head, so I guess that’s what I’m doing. I didn’t want to write in, like, a diary or whatever, so I figured I’d write to you instead. Obviously you won’t see it, but I figured it’d be better than nothing. _

_ Anyway, my thoughts have sort of been everywhere, but for some reason I keep coming back to the 2010 Stark Expo. I have no idea why. It’s funny, you probably never even realized this, that we met that night. Uncle Ben and Aunt May had taken me. Mr. Stark, I was so freaking excited, you wouldn’t even believe. All night, I wore this dumb Iron Man helmet that Ben bought me. I felt on top of the world. And then there was the attack and even that wasn’t enough to ruin my night. In that helmet, I felt like I  WAS  Iron Man. I didn’t even think twice about putting myself in front of that drone, and I probably wouldn’t have made it if you hadn’t stepped in. Man, Ben was so mad, Mr. Stark. At me, obviously, not you. I guess I’ve always been a magnet for trouble.  _

_ Anyway, I think I was just thinking about how weird it is, how you’ve always been there, protecting me, even when you didn’t know it. And I’d just like to say thank you, Mr. Stark, because I never got to say that. Thank you so much for that night and for everything that came after. You’ve done more than you know and I’ll never forget. _

_ Peter Parker  _   
  


That’s why the handwriting looks familiar. Tony’s seen it tons of times, scribbled in notebooks and assignments and on the sides of his blueprints.

The kid. Peter.

Tony’s hands are shaking by the time he gets to the bottom of the page. Where did this come from? There’s no way - absolutely _no way_ \- for something like this to find him.

Tony puts the paper down, rubbing his hands over his face. It had to be from before Titan. Maybe someone found it in the kid’s things? But who? And how did they send it to Tony?

He reads over the letter again, eyes catching on specific terms.

_...2010 Stark Expo…_

_...we met that night…_

_...I wore this dumb Iron Man helmet…_

_...you’ve always been there, protecting me…_

Tony remembers. Of course he remembers that night, no matter how long ago it was now. The metallic taste of adrenaline in his mouth, the panic around him at the expo, Hammer’s drones, the fear of losing Rhodey and Pepper.

And he remembers the kid, the one who’d put himself in front of a drone with a foolish bravery that Tony could never imitate. _Nice work kid_.

Of course that was Peter. Tony would laugh if he didn’t feel sick to his stomach. There’s no way for him to have known, but maybe he should’ve. It’s exactly the kind of thing Peter still does - _did_.

Tony lets out a heavy sigh, eyes raking over the letter a few more times, trying to memorize every line, every crossed “T” and dotted “I”. He’s still shaking a little, his stomach still churning.

This is the kind of surprise he never would’ve expected.

After he’s sat for what feels like hours, Tony puts the letter in his pocket, folding it up neatly. He throws away the rest of the mail, and instead of heading to bed as planned, he heads back down to his lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you've enjoyed chapter 1! I love feedback, so please feel free to leave comments and kudos. 
> 
> You can come talk to me on tumblr @[singledadniall](http://singledadniall.tumblr.com) or on twitter @[tjoshov](http://twitter.com/tjoshov). Both are places where I am often found yelling "PETER PARKER IS JUST A BABY", crying about Wally West, and occasionally screaming during hockey games.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is getting better with emotions, has been getting better with them for a long time now, but grief. Grief is a whole other animal completely. He doesn’t know how to handle it, never has, even though he’s lost people before. The best he can do right now is hold on to the bits of good in his life, and not let the sharp, piercing ache he feels in chest when he thinks of Peter consume him.
> 
> Peter’s gone. Tony held him, heard the fear and desperation in his voice as he disintegrated into dust. And now, without the Stones, Tony knows there’s no chance of getting him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH for the incredibly sweet and wonderful feedback from chapter one!!!!! The reception so far has made me so happy and I love you all so much ♥
> 
> I go back to work tomorrow (#teacherlife), so I wanted to get one more chapter up before then! I'm still gonna try to the best of my ability to keep up with the at least once a week posting schedule :)
> 
> **A little important note**: If you have trouble reading the text in the image - the image is also a link and clicking on it will take you to the full size.
> 
> Thank you so much to Kassie for looking this chapter over ♥

_ **2023** _

Peter’s days fall into a steady pattern.

Wake up. Eat breakfast. Take a run around the lake. Think about going into the nearest town. Nix that idea. Eat lunch. Roam around outside, staying close to the property. Eat dinner. Sleep. Repeat.

There’s not much for him to do around the house. It’s only been a few days, but Peter is already going stir-crazy. He’s never been forced to stay inside like this before. He misses going out, patrolling, doing something that he knows makes a difference, even if it is small.

Most of all, Peter just hates being inside _this_ house, thinking about what it must’ve been like before it was a ghost of a home. Here, it’s easy to think of Tony, something he’d tried desperately not to do since the final battle against Thanos. At home, he had distractions: school, Ned, MJ, Spiderman duties. Here, there’s nothing but him and his thoughts and the deafening silence that he’s already sick of.

When he can, Peter tries to stay outside. He can’t go far, but sometimes it’s nice to explore in the wooded area next to the house, or sit at the end of the pier and watch the ebb and flow of the lake.

Unlike most of the things in Peter’s life right now, the lake is steady and constant - stable - and he tries to find solace in that when he can.

\--

There’s an entrance leading to a storm cellar that Peter doesn’t pay much attention to until he notices the electronic pad next to it. There’s no reason for the cellar to be locked unless something important was down there.

Peter approaches the cellar hesitantly, lifting up the cover of the pad, expecting to find a keypad or something of the sort. Instead, he’s startled when a blue light shines out, a laser scanning him from his brows to the tip of his nose.

“_Retinal scan recognized. Welcome, Peter Parker_.”

“Woah, cool,” Peter says, feeling a spike of excitement in the pit of his stomach for the first time in weeks.

He makes his way down the stairs carefully, trying not to think about what it means that Tony programmed the scanner to recognize him.

Lights turn on as Peter makes his way into the cellar and Peter’s jaw drops a little when he reaches the bottom of the steps. The room opens up into a lab and workroom, similar to the one that Tony had back at the compound.

“This is sick,” Peter says, walking through the lab.

Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust, and it’s obvious that Peter is the first one to be down here in a long time. It’s possible, Peter thinks, that no one’s been down here since before - since _before_.

There’s a desk covered in schematics and calculations, papers strewn every which way. An empty coffee mug with the SI logo is turned on its side, like it was knocked down in a hurry. Gears and odds and ends litter the workspace, waiting to be put together with delicate hands.

It’s obvious that Tony thought he’d be returning here, and the realization that he’ll never walk the steps again sits heavy on Peter’s chest.

“_Hello, Peter._”

Peter jumps backwards against the desk in surprise. “FRI?” he asks. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“_I’m sorry, Peter. That was not my intention. Welcome back to the lab. Is there anything I can assist you with today?” _

“Um,” Peter hesitates. There’s a blueprint stuck to his hand that refuses to shake free, no matter how hard he tries. “Can you show me what Mr. Stark was last working on?”

“_Certainly, Peter.” _

FRIDAY projects a collection of schematics and Peter scrolls through them, wondering if there’s something he can finish on his own. There’s no reason to let Tony’s work and vision to disappear along with him.

\--

Peter doesn’t know how long he spends down in the lab, just tinkering. There’s not much for him to work on from Tony’s things - most of it is absolutely incomprehensible to Peter, and probably anyone who isn’t Tony himself. So, instead, Peter uses FRIDAY’s help to see if he can make some minor adjustments to the spider suit that’d he’d been hoping to get done.

While he works, he talks. FRIDAY is a good listener (though not as good as Karen), and though she isn’t _real_, it’s good to voice his thoughts and have something answer him back for a change.

“_Peter, you have a call coming in from Ned Leeds. Should I patch it through?” _FRIDAY asks as Peter is bent over his suit, making modifications to Droney.

“Ned?” Peter asks, picking his head up. “Um, yeah, of course.”

FRIDAY creates a visual for Peter right in front of him, projecting Ned’s call through video. Peter’s never been so happy to see him in his life.

“Peter! Holy crap, you’re alive. Where are you?” Ned says, tripping over his words in his excitement.

“Um, a safe house,” Peter says, not sure if it’s a great idea to give out his exact location over this line. He has no idea how secure it is. “Pepper set me up with it.”

“Holy crap,” Ned says again. “Dude, we’ve been so worried. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good, Ned,” Peter says, wondering if he sounds convincing at all. “I’m sorry I haven’t reached out. Things have been -” Peter stops, unsure how to finish the thought.

“Weird?” Ned supplies and Peter nods.

“Definitely weird,” he agrees. “How are you guys? Aunt May? MJ?”

“Um,” Ned falters, biting the corner of his lip. “Well…”

“Ned,” Peter says slowly, stomach bottoming out. “Ned, please tell me everything is okay,” he says, trying not to plead.

“No, everything’s fine!” Ned says quickly. He sighs, running a hand through his hair before saying. “It’s just - everyone is looking for you, Peter. Agents came to question all of us. It was pretty scary, man. And May - she’s a mess. She’s so worried. We’re all worried.”

Peter didn’t think it was possible for his stomach to sink lower, but somehow it does, swooping unpleasantly like during the dip of a rollercoaster. He hates making people worry, hates putting them in danger.

Peter could never forgive himself if anything happened to his friends, to May, because of him.

“Please tell me you’re staying safe, Ned,” Peter says, voice small.

“We’re fine, Peter,” Ned says, “as long as you’re good too. We’re here for you, dude. If you need anything, let me know. I’m still your man in the chair.”

“It’s better if you don’t get involved,” Peter says, picking nervously at the paper label of the water bottle he’d brought down from the kitchen with him. It’s soft and weak from the condensation, getting stuck under his fingernails easily. “Promise me, Ned. Don’t - don’t do anything. Just, let me figure this out. Please, don’t do anything-”

Peter’s voice catches at the end. He can feel tears of frustration pooling in his eyes and he keeps his gaze down.

Ned is quiet. All Peter can hear is the sound of their breathing, until Ned says, “Okay, Peter. Just. Promise me you’ll talk to May? Tell her you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I’ll try. And you should wait, probably. Before I figure out if it’s safe for me to reach out to you guys. And then I’ll call you.”

“Okay,” Ned says, voice small. “Peter, I’m glad you’re good. We have your back, alright?”

“Yeah, thanks, Ned,” Peter says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “Stay safe.”

“You too, man.”

Ned’s call ends with a slight buzz of static and Peter is alone again, left only with worry consuming him from head to toe.

[ ](https://ibb.co/GnQvYs0)

_ **2018** _

Tony doesn’t tell Pepper about the letter.

He’s not sure why he wants to keep it to himself, but it feels too private, too personal to share, even with Pepper. So he keeps it folded and tucked in the pocket of his jeans, and sometimes, when he has moments to himself, he takes it out and reads over the now familiar lines over and over again.

Tony is getting better with emotions, has been getting better with them for a long time now, but grief. Grief is a whole other animal completely. He doesn’t know how to handle it, never has, even though he’s lost people before. The best he can do right now is hold on to the bits of good in his life, and not let the sharp, piercing ache he feels in chest when he thinks of Peter consume him.

Peter’s gone. Tony held him, heard the fear and desperation in his voice as he disintegrated into dust. And now, without the Stones, Tony knows there’s no chance of getting him back.

\--

“Tony? Tony, are you listening at all?”

Pepper’s voice sounds far away, and the only thing that really gets Tony’s attention is when she runs a gentle hand through his hair.

“What? No, sorry,” he admits. “I’m just - sorry,” he finishes a bit pathetically, not knowing what to spew out as an excuse.

“Your mind’s been somewhere else lately,” Pepper says, corners of her mouth pursed. “What’s going on in that head of yours, huh?”

“Oh, nothing,” Tony says, trying for a smile. He kisses the top of her head, hoping it reassures her.

“Hm, the usual, then?” she asks, leaning against his side. Tony brings his arm up, wrapping it around Pepper’s shoulders.

Tony can’t think of an answering quip, and just laughs instead, letting Pepper lay her head against his shoulder.

“You would tell me if something was wrong, right?” Pepper asks. “We’re past the whole bottling things up until we have a meltdown thing?”

“Yeah, of course, Pep. You know me. Open book, heart on my sleeve, totally emotionally available one hundred percent of the time,” Tony says, laughing more genuinely when

Pepper elbows him gently in the side.

“I’m serious,” she says, craning her head up so she can look at him. Tony wants to smooth away the worried wrinkles on her forehead with his fingers. “You can talk to me. Whatever it is.”

“I know. It’s nothing, really. Just being a bit spacey. Nothing to worry about,” Tony reassures her.

Pepper doesn’t look like she believes him, but she lets it go for the moment, turning back to the movie they’ve been watching - well, that _she’s _been watching. Tony probably couldn’t tell someone a single thing about the movie if his life depended on it. His thoughts are far, far away, stuck on the wretched surface of a planet he hopes never to return to.

\--

Tony’s down in his lab long after Pepper goes to bed. He’s been spending more time there in the last few days, thinking, working. Pepper says he’s hiding, but Tony swears that’s not the case. He has nothing to hide, after all.

Tony doesn’t remember the last time he’d buried himself in his work like this. It’s not as bad as after the first battle of New York, but it’s somewhere close. His eyes burn, and he can feel the beginnings of a headache pressing against his temple. He can’t sleep, though, doesn’t want to, not when every time he drifts off, he’s back there on Titan, buried under his panic.

So he works, he tinkers, he calculates. He does anything he can to keep himself busy.

Well past midnight, Tony runs out of coffee. He reaches for his mug, frowning when he realizes it’s empty. He pushes back on his chair, rolling behind him to the Keurig he had nabbed from the kitchen a few weeks ago since he was the only one using it anyway. It’s moments like this he really misses DUM-E - he’d never had to worry about empty coffee cups when the little guy was around.

Tony comes back to his desk with a full cup of coffee and his headache still pulsing insistently. He’s so tired, and he knows he should go back upstairs, knows that Pepper will notice he’s not there during one of her many, many late night trips to the bathroom.

After this cup, he tells himself, setting the mug down on his desk and reaching for his pen.

Tony freezes.

Is he seeing things? He’s not nearly tired enough for that, is he?

No, he’s definitely not seeing things, because right on top of where his pen was minutes ago is a notepad, one with the SI logo on top and now very, very familiar handwriting scrawled across the page. He can see the end of the pen poking out from underneath the notepad. The notepad that definitely was not there when he’d gone to make his coffee.

Tony’s fingers tremble as he picks up the notepad. His chest is tight, his heart being squeezed like it’s trapped in a metal clamp.

_Mr. Stark,_

_I can’t admit this to anyone, so I guess I’ll admit it to you: I’m so freaking scared. After coming back from the blip, I was hoping things would go back to normal. I hate being in hiding. I wish you were here, Mr. Stark. You would know what to do. I don’t know how to do this by myself. But you’re gone and I’m on my own and I just. I don’t know what to do._

Tony’s eyes scan the page once, twice, three times, before stopping, stuck on one phrase: _After coming back from the blip. _

The blip. That’s what they’ve been calling it - whatever it is that Thanos did to them all - on the news, in the papers. The only people who would know the term would be the people who survived. People like Tony, like Pepper. Not people like Peter.

Tony is still frozen - and not just frozen in place. He feels cold, a chill traveling up his spine and spreading out through the rest of him.

“What the fuck?” Tony says, voice hoarse. He drops the notepad like it’s burned him, a delayed reaction once he comprehends what he’s read. _After coming back from the blip…_

It doesn’t make sense. Even without his name, Tony knows this is Peter’s handwriting. And he knows this notepad wasn’t on his desk minutes ago. He knows he’s not imagining things because the note is still there. And he knows there’s no way for Peter to know about the blip because Tony knows -

Fuck, Tony knows that Peter is _dead_.

“This is not fucking happening,” Tony says. He can hear the hysteria in his own voice. “What the actual fuck. This is - no. No fucking way.”

Tony doesn’t know where the note came from. He doesn’t know how it got to him, what it means, what it _could_ mean. He pushes back from his desk almost violently, coffee spilling out from the edges of his mug.

Unlike the note already in his pocket, Tony leaves this one on his desk, exactly where it landed when it fell from his fingers.

Quickly, Tony leaves the workshop, his breathing sharp and ragged when he’s back upstairs. He manages to stay upright, but only because of the support from the wall he’s leaning against.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! How do we feel about the letters being presented as images? I'm personally having fun making them, but want to get your opinions as well! Should I add a text version in as well? Let me know in the comments, and kudos are always appreciated as well.
> 
> As always, you can find me on twitter at [tjoshov](http://twitter.com/tjoshov) or on tumblr at [singledadniall](http://singledadniall.tumblr.com).


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